#NYC woman whose bra stopped bullet and saved her life says city needs cops

Enlarge Image

Dainiesa Murdaugh, who survived a shooting after a bullet became lodged in her bra.
J.C.Rice

It’s going to take more than a Playtex push-up to stop the “senseless shootings” wreaking havoc on the city, according to a Brooklyn woman whose bra saved her life during deadly gunplay a little over a year ago.

“Nobody knows how to be civil. Everybody is resorting to gun violence,” 22-year-old Daniesa Murdaugh fumed to The Post. “People are angry. They don’t know how to get that anger out. I’m not justifying nothing. I honestly felt like this was coming because we were quarantined.”

Murdaugh knows about gun violence. On July 27, 2019, she was among 12 people shot — two of whom died — in a wild shoot-out at a packed Brownsville block party  Miraculously, Murdaugh escaped with a graze wound after her bra stopped a bullet.

Murdaugh said the recent wave of violence is sparking “flashbacks,” but the ardent supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement noted it’s the community — not the cops — who should be held accountable.

“It’s very frustrating. Everybody wants to scream Black Lives Matter but there is more black on black crimes than there is police brutality crimes,” she said. “I absolutely feel there’s a need for police reform. The training is not preparing them for what they’re coming out to … [But] this is down to us.”

“There’s definitely a need for police reform and there’s definitely a need for police,” Murdaugh said.

NYPD statistics show shootings have more than doubled for the year, with about 200 more victims than the same time last year, according to data released Monday.

Last July 27, Murdaugh “felt a sting” in her back, but initially didn’t pay it much mind. “I was looking for the people I came with and I reached back and felt wet in my back. … I felt the bullet and I touched the blood. … I reached my left hand underneath and back and I felt it. I told my friends, ‘I’ve been shot.’”

When medics unhooked her bra, “the bullet was just sitting in the bra strap and it just fell out,” Murdaugh’s mom, Odessa Watson told The Post at the time.

The bra stopped the bullet, but not the lingering scars.

“I’m slowly trying to get back into society. I’ve been taking it one day at a time. Even though the physical pain is gone, I still have anxiety,” said Murdaugh, adding she has nightmares about the bloody mayhem at the annual Old Timers Day event, which was held again about a month ago. “In the dreams the outcomes are always different, but never good.”

The 22-year-old currently works overnight at an Amazon warehouse, but the daughter of a traffic agent aspires to be a city Correction officer.

“Grow up and learn to walk away from the little things that don’t require your energy nor your time,” she advises young people. “Put that time and energy into something productive. Something that will help your community, not destroy it.”

Murdaugh confessed she was “sheltered” growing up in Brooklyn and did not experience the violence first-hand. But now she has, and “to see and hear all that’s been happening is sad.”

A year after her own shooting, Murdaugh is grateful for her black Rainbow bra, and something bigger.

“People say, ‘Thanks to the bra.’ It was thanks to God. I’m going to honor life .. but I’m definitely going to pray.”